1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital broadcasts. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for a plurality of devices to share a channel map of digital broadcast channels in a home network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital broadcasts can be classified into digital terrestrial broadcasts, digital satellite broadcasts, and cable digital broadcasts. The program data of individual channels are compressed based on an encoding standard, such as Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and multiplexed according to a specific digital modulation scheme for transmission efficiency. For this reason, the digital broadcast system has no need of a plurality of repeaters that would be needed in an analog broadcast system.
A conventional TV or set-top box is configured to add/delete a channel scanned by its tuner to/from the channel map. With technical advances of residential home networks, the advent of infrastructure available for sharing a real time broadcast stream in the home network has caused a problem of addition/deletion of channels by multiple users, and thus there is a desire to develop a method for multiple users to share a channel map without collision in such environment.
Typically, the channel information is managed in the form of a table or a linked list, and a channel can be added or deleted from the channel map automatically in the frequency tuning process or according to the user's intention. When the same channel map is shared by a plurality of users, the modification of the channel map by a user is likely to interfere with other users.